Not All Addictions Are Bad

How an Addict Landed the Ultimate Score
 

- Beto Mendoza

Old habits are hard to break, especially when one considers the fact that they are formed from behavioral patterns imprinted in our neural pathways. Through repetition, these habits become compulsory, and from there they become a habitual effort that trumps logic. But are all addictions bad? Not necessarily. An addiction to perfection would prove to be an exemplary character trait to have, but couple that with a touch of OCD and a love for classic cars and what you’ve essentially got is a car buff who creates vehicles of legendary and exemplary proportions. Thus is the case of Johnny Salters—a lowriding sensation who has long created lowriders that set the benchmark for excellence.

While most of us sift through Craigslist and the classified ads every few months, only one thing remains certain: The cost of project cars keeps rising while our incomes stay stagnant. As the years pass, this ritualistic behavior leaves many of us thinking we should have bought that same year/make/model a decade ago, but as the months pass we continue our hopeless search. Well, for Johnny, this behavior is something he practices daily. At any given moment you can find him searching for deals all across the country, regardless of whether he’s in the market or not. Well, the habit paid off for him in 2012 when he found a '57 Bel Air convertible in Atlanta. “I was in Los Angeles with my wife, Georgette, and before catching our flight I began looking up cars in Atlanta where our connecting flight was and I found a deal for a '57,” Johnny says. After a brief phone call, the deal was sealed and he placed an additional call to his parents who met him in Atlanta in tow with a truck and trailer.